The Timing of the Campaign

It comes as no surprise to us at Top Drawer that people are hungry for in-depth, inspirational stories about business and sustainability.

Corporate Knights is a Toronto-based magazine dedicated to covering international 'clean capitalism' and sustainability initiatives. Long a quarterly print publication, editor in chief Tyler Hamilton has increasingly noticed that people have been coming to the publication's website,www.corporateknights.com day after day, for shareable, purposeful stories that showcase sustainable business practices.

"But our previous website really wasn't built to produce daily content in a way that was attractive and accessible, "said Hamilton. "We were on a Drupal system, and it wasn't very intuitive or user-friendly, and couldn't do a lot of the things that we wanted to do in terms of organizing content and leveraging the art that we have."

In the Spring of 2014, Hamilton and his team decided to overhaul the site to meet the demand for daily content, and more accurately reflect the magazine's recent redesign.

The Challenge

"We put out an RFP early in the year, had six companies bid on it, and Top Drawer was shortlisted among the top two," said Hamilton. "We met with Top Drawer a couple of times, and gelled really well with the team there. We have shared values and we're both B Corps. Top Drawer 'got' what we're doing, understands the content, and more than the other developers, also understands our readers."

Top Drawer recommended a built-from-scratch theme on the WordPress platform, a standard in the online news business. Corporate Knights' art director Jack Dylan designed the site exactly the way he wanted to see it to mirror the look and feel of the magazine.

"We just handed it over to Top Drawer and said 'do it' and Top Drawer did it," said Hamilton.

"This was our first foray into online publishing," said Top Drawer Creative VP Digital Frank Aloise. "We went with WordPress for its usability—the Corporate Knights team is going to be using the site on a constant basis, so it's important that the back-end is as fluid as the reader experience."

The Result

As Hamilton detailed in last week's news release announcing the website, "the result is a full-featured, eye-grabbing site, updated daily and packed with articles arranged under more than a dozen sustainability themes or 'Channels,' each of which allows readers to subscribe to regular e-mail updates. Our Perspectives section delivers Q&As, book reviews, guest commentaries and regular columns, while our Reports section makes it effortless to find our research and popular rankings.'

Going forward, Top Drawer will provide ongoing support, and continue to partner with Corporate Knights as a fellow B Corp and sustainable-minded business.